How many times have you gone to Wikipedia today, only to get their “Imagine a World without Free Knowledge” message? It’s happened to me four times already (I STILL don’t know the complete biographical background on the dad from “Webster”), and I’m pretty sure it’ll occur nine more times before the day’s out. But I’m not mad; I can wait to know what movies were shot in South Dakota. It’s for a good cause.

Today is SOPA Day on the Internet. Hundreds of websites, including Wikipedia and Reddit, are protesting the very bad Stop Online Piracy and Protect IP acts because, well, they’re very bad. Matt wrote about it back in November, and Señor Fancy Lawyer Man Danger Guerrero would like to add:

I can’t stress strongly enough to all of you how terrible the whole SOPA/PIPA thing is…Not only will this bill throw a giant wrench into the Internet, it also has SERIOUS Constitutional ramifications. It gives mass copyright holders (Disney, record companies, Viacom, etc.) the ability to restrict people’s speech and take away their property (websites) without due process.

That’s my favorite kind of process! So, contact your local representative and tell them, SOPA STINKS. After you’ve done that – ONLY after you’ve done that – check back here to see how the Internet has been reacting to the threat of censorship, through the use of TV shows and characters. I’ve added a few of my own, as should you. Find an image, add text here, and copy the link in the comments. We’ll include the best in the slideshow.

As a South Dakotan I can tell you that “north by northwest” and “starship troopers” were filmed in the rushmore state oh and so was “thunderheart” and “dances with wolves”. Basically anything involving native Americans or mountains with faces carved in them.

Thank you for supporting the illegal rogue websites from abroad. With piracy costing about 750 thousand jobs a year it’s good to know my industry and others will lose 250 billion dollars so you can steal TV and movies over the internet for free.

I don’t oppose SOPA/PIPA because I’m pro-piracy. I oppose them because they’re a shitty attempt to prevent piracy that will stifle communication/business on the Internet, and they have serious Constitutional ramifications. It’s a bad attempt to fix a serious problem.

Really? Yeah, really.
According to a study cited by the National Crime Prevention Council, counterfeit products and stolen intellectual property may cost up to 750,000 jobs each year and $250 billion in lost revenue across all sectors of the economy.” (Las Vegas Sun)

What Danger said. This isn’t about supporting piracy, it’s about stopping unwarranted and unchecked censorship of the internet. If the bills were better written, this wouldn’t be such a problem. You have to be sure that the weapon against piracy isn’t worse than piracy itself.

SOPA and PIPA don’t really do a damn thing to curb the counterfeit products most likely referenced in that report. Unless it has a provision to bomb the fuck out of Chinese street vendors (it probably does).

You can bypass Wikipedia’s blackout by say, googling for the wikipedia entry of something and then for a split second before the page goes to the world without knowledge page, it will show you the entry. hit stop on your browser and bam, you are using wikipedia.

As someone who doesn’t live in the US I’m going to do what I can. I’m going to give money to a random Iranian who owns the corner store, who will probably funnel it to Al Qaeda. That’s helping against SOPA right?

I’m curious how a lawyer can say there’s no due process here. Sending a notarized letter to halt any enforcement under SOPA is pretty deferential to the alleged infringer. I would say that’s more due process than available under the DMCA, where an alleged infringer is required to go out and hire a lawyer to file a formal answer to mount a defense.

This whole thing is just ridiculous. The internet is destroying people’s ability to think critically. How many of you who care so passionately about this subject have made even the slightest effort to read and understand the legislation. Given the comments here I’m quite confident that number is zero. But somehow all this nonsense was able to grind the US Congress to a halt. We’re not going to have a functional government for very much longer. Getting very close to the bottom here.

The bill that I read also doesn’t require the Internet Providers, Advertisers or Payment Providers to restore services after recieving the counter-notice from the website. Since SOPA grants immunity to those companies when they pull the plug, there is no incentive for them to restore service, effectively allowing the biggest companies with the deepest pockets to decide who and what get to have a presence on the Internet.